KMAX: News of the West

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) Ecologist Garrett Hardin, who argued for curbing immigration and population growth, and his wife Jane have died.

The couple, both in their 80s, apparently committed suicide, their daughter Sharon Clauson said.

She said her 88-year-old father had a heart condition, and her 81-year-old mother had a form of the degenerative nerve illness known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

They were found dead in their Santa Barbara home on Sept. 14.

The official cause of death was unknown pending further investigation, according to the county coroner's office.

Hardin and his wife belonged to End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society, a nonprofit group that supports the right of dying patients to commit suicide.

The Hardins ``felt very strongly that they wanted to choose their own time to die,'' Clauson told the Santa Barbara News-Press.

``We're very sad about his passing,'' Diane Hull, president of Santa Barbara-based Californians for Population Stabilization, which Hardin founded, said Thursday. ``He did engender enormous respect from everyone, even those who were critical of him.''

Hardin was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught biology and environmental studies for more than 30 years. He was trained as an ecologist and microbiologist at the University of Chicago and Stanford University.

He authored more than two dozen books and hundreds of articles promoting the idea that any given resource has a ``carrying capacity'' that cannot be surpassed without disaster.

In works such as his 1968 essay, ``The Tragedy of the Commons,'' he argued that the common holding of natural resources, whether by people within a single nation or globally, has led to water and air pollution, overfishing and overgrazing.

Hardin felt that overpopulation was a critical threat to both environment and culture.

A lifelong Republican, he raised hackles along the political spectrum with his attacks on anti-abortionists, supporters of affirmative action and global government and ``growth-intoxicated industrialists.''

Hardin and his wife helped run an underground operation that sent 200 women to Mexico for abortions before the procedure was legal in the United States.

Malcolm Potts, professor of population and family planning at the University of California, Berkeley, said Hardin's views were not widely shared but that his tough questions about resource management stirred up discussion.

``We should be thankful that he made us think about it,'' Potts said.

The Hardins are also survived by a daughter, Hyla Fetler, and sons Peter and David Hardin.